Election Day, Nov. 3, is less than six weeks away. Early voting opens Oct. 19.

Campaigns are in full swing. Candidates and their wealthy Political Action Committees bombard our mailboxes daily and our airwaves hourly with splashy advertisements. They’re spending millions to earn our vote – hammering away on issues their political consultants say are most important.

Yet these advertisements are completely silent on the issue of Christians who have been wrongfully persecuted by Alaska state officials. This issue is particularly important in the campaigns for governor and U.S. Senate, because two of the candidates are responsible for these persecutions.

Their opponents are letting this pass by. Will we be content with the status quo? Or will we begin to raise our voice in unison, holding all candidates accountable, and help bring these unjust persecutions to an end?

According to 2024 data from Pew Research Center, 56% of Alaskans are Christians and 26% are “highly religious.”  These percentages represent a powerful voting bloc which can determine the outcome of our elections if we’re unified under God.

Some of our Christian neighbors have been unjustly persecuted … they need us to stop and help.

All of us have issues that are important to us. Where then should we rank justice?

The Bible gives us an abundantly clear answer – at the top. The words of God through Moses, the Prophets, and Jesus are uniform. Justice is everything – pursuing it diligently is an essential responsibility of every person.

In Deuteronomy 16:20, Moses tells the people God’s commandment that “Justice, justice you shall pursue, so that you may live and take possession of the land which God, your God, is giving you.”  In other words, there can be no Promised Land without giving justice utmost priority.

Centuries later in Isaiah 1:17, the esteemed prophet says, “Learn to do good. Devote yourself to justice. Aid the wronged.”

Centuries later, Jesus says in Matthew 5:6, “God blesses those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be satisfied.”

In Luke 10, Jesus is asked by an expert in religious law what he must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus responds by citing the law of Moses and relating it to the following story of the Good Samaritan:

A Jewish man was attacked by bandits and left for dead along the road. A priest and then a temple assistant passed him by. But a Samaritan man didn’t pass. He stopped. He soothed the victim’s wounds. He bandaged them. He took the man to an inn and paid the innkeeper to take care of him.

These Christians clearly did not deserve the persecution they received.

Jesus then tells the religious expert to go and act neighborly like the Samaritan.

Jesus’ timeless story is being repeated today in Alaska. Some of our Christian neighbors have been unjustly persecuted and are bleeding by the side of the road. They need us to stop and help.

We can do that by electing candidates who will pledge to stop the persecutions and restore justice to the victims. It begins with turning these trials and tribulations at the hands of our government into campaign issues.

AK Mom, Jeff and Sharon Walls, and Thomas Jack, Jr., are all devout Christians. Each of them is extremely family oriented. Each is a hard worker who served their communities in exemplary fashion. We all have our blemishes, but theirs were minor compared to most of us.

These Christians clearly did not deserve the persecution they received. Perhaps, like other blameless victims in the Scriptures, their persecutions were meant to serve as God’s wake-up call to Alaskans of the lawlessness and moral decay at the highest levels of our government.

I’ve written and talked about their persecutions repeatedly over the last three years in the Watchman and several other media outlets throughout Alaska. I won’t go far into the details here, except to briefly summarize their cases and how they relate to the two candidates.

AK Mom was doing a remarkable job raising her five adopted children with special needs in the Mat-Su area. On false allegations by state officials that she was medically abusing her children, the state took her children away, split them up, and transferred them to an aggregate of 80 placements. AK Mom exhausted her entire life savings on legal bills trying to get her kids back and fighting off attorneys under the leadership of former Attorney General Treg Taylor.

The unjust persecution of this family reached the despicable point where Taylor’s attorneys actually fought to keep one of the children in an Anchorage homeless shelter, vulnerable to traffickers, rather than returning home. Eventually, AK Mom was able to get all her children back, but the emotional damage inflicted upon them by the state was severe. She is still struggling to pick up the pieces.

Jeff Walls was the former police chief of Ketchikan. In his first year on the job, his department increased its fentanyl seizures by over 500% and was recognized by the FBI for their outstanding work. Towards the end of that first year, Jeff and his wife Sharon were twice assaulted, yet in a bizarre twist, prosecutors under the direction of Taylor dropped charges against the assailant and maliciously went after Jeff instead.

Over the course of the next two years, Taylor’s prosecutors obtained three successive grand jury indictments against Jeff. Each one was subsequently thrown out by a Ketchikan judge who found that both the prosecutors and the State Troopers who testified misled the grand juries.

Taylor still wouldn’t back off, forcing the Walls to leave Alaska in exchange for the state dropping misdemeanor charges. My articles detailed how retired Public Safety Commissioner Dick Burton and retired Trooper Lieutenant Jeff Hall were bewildered by the State’s vendetta against the Walls. Burton said, “Something here is really stinky.”  Hall was more blunt, saying, “Chief got screwed.”

Thomas Jack Jr., a lifelong resident of Hoonah, was twice tried in Juneau by prosecutors under the leadership of former Attorney General Dan Sullivan. Jack’s tribe, the Hoonah Indian Association, later passed a unanimous Resolution stating, “the conduct and performance of the Alaska criminal justice system through [the] case is deeply troubling.”

Neither Taylor nor Sullivan has accepted any responsibility for their involvement in these unjust persecutions of innocent Christians.

A key witness in the case was his pastor, Bob Barton, a decorated veteran pilot. Barton, who was out of state for both trials and unable to testify, later said he couldn’t imagine how Jack could be convicted in a fair trial by an impartial jury. He had expected the charges against Jack to be dropped after they were properly investigated. He criticized one of the lead prosecutors for not following the truth.

Sullivan’s prosecutors sought a 50-year prison sentence for Jack. After the first trial resulted in a hung jury, Sullivan’s prosecutors offered Jack a plea bargain with as little as two years in jail. Jack, who has always maintained his innocence, turned it down. He and his wife marched around the downtown Juneau courthouse seven times.

Prosecutors then rushed a second trial, knowing Jack would be represented by a newly appointed, incompetent attorney. This component of our Christian brother’s wrongful conviction violated important statutory ethical requirements of prosecutors to ensure a fair trial. Jack, who also had plenty of constitutional rights violated by Sullivan’s prosecutors, has now spent the last 16 years in prison.

The Tribal Council of HIA specifically found that Jack has retained his presumption of innocence and called for his immediate release. They asked the governor to issue Jack a Pardon for Innocence. Taylor was the Attorney General when the Resolution was passed in 2023. He repeatedly ignored it and helped kill a grand jury investigation into Jack’s wrongful conviction.

Knowledgeable Alaskans working in our justice system have told me there are many other wrongful convictions in our state similar to Jack’s. A close Alaskan Native friend has told me he believes justice in Jack’s case will lead to justice in a vast number of other cases.

Neither Taylor nor Sullivan has accepted any responsibility for their involvement in these unjust persecutions of innocent Christians. Nor has either of them stopped along the road to help these Christians victimized by the other.

I’ve tried several times over the last few years to get Sullivan to acknowledge the due process and ethical failures that occurred under his leadership, and work towards justice in Jack’s case. The tribal resolution from a sovereign entity is a federal issue. This summer I communicated with three of Sullivan’s senior staff about the issues. His current campaign manager promised he would discuss it internally and get back to me. He never did.

Should believers vote for a person who was responsible for the persecution of an innocent Christian 16 years ago? Should believers vote for a candidate who has since ignored all subsequent pleas for help?

Sharon Walls told me that she wrote to Senator Sullivan asking for his help in restoring justice to her family. He didn’t respond.

And what about Taylor? Can Republican believers appease God by “Ranking the Red” and putting Taylor as their second or third choice? What if that vote enables Taylor to win and become our next governor? Will God be pleased?

These are all serious questions that require prayer, hopefully collectively and in unity.

Will Alaskan Christians help their persecuted brothers and sisters? Will we insist that all candidates address these persecutions and pledge justice?

Please join me in praying that Alaska candidates and voters will act in accordance with God’s commandment to pursue justice.

The views expressed here are those of the author.

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